Cry God for Harry, England and who?

Home rule for England may be too ironic a concept for some, but home marketing is another matter, says Stuart Harrison.

It's almost 30 years since we celebrated English cooking with the colourful and highly media-friendly launch of "A Taste of England".

The regions of England entered into the promotion with great gusto, and the marketing reached from Hadrian's Wall to the "Garden of England" in Kent.

Now, readers new to the industry may not understand the juxtaposition of the words "England" and "marketing". Today they are deleted from the English (sorry, British) language by a Government that attends elocution lessons to learn how to pronounce "Wales", "Scotland" and "Northern Ireland" with great deference, but then stumbles over the "E" word, which dribbles out as "Regional Development Agencies".

Back then, the English Tourist Board (ETB), working on a level playing field, could regularly afford to identify national themes and promote them with some success. As parity started to slip away from the English, the ETB, under Michael Montague, gallantly came up with even more themes and celebrations to promote the distinctive features of England.

Alas, to no avail. The overwhelming tide from Whitehall crushed the standard of St George and raised, in its place, the flag of the union.

Now even that popular Londoner, Ken Livingstone, wants to bury St George. He has announced that London will stage officially sponsored celebrations of St Patrick's Day on 17 March but will allow 23 April, St George's Day, to pass unremarked. Without dwelling on the merits of the mayor's plans for 17 March, this is a call to arms for us in the hospitality industry whose history, product or geography is English.

Let's get one thing clear - and, frankly, be quite strident about it. The vast majority of people who want to stand under the flag of St George and create promotions and marketing plans under the England name are not shaven-headed, tattooed hooligans (as a passionate supporter of Oxford United, I will refrain from adding football into the nomenclature). Neither are they little-islander fascists.

It is time for all of England to celebrate its Englishness and Tuesday 23 April should provide the rallying point. If the English Tourism Council doesn't have any marketing money, at least it could co-ordinate the coming-together of the hospitality and tourism industry to create a force for future marketing.

Corporately, "England the brand" may be already too late for 23 April 2002, but individually the quintessential English pub, the country house hotel in the shires and the growing number of English food and drink suppliers should remind us all that England is still a fair and pleasant land. n

Stuart Harrison runs the Profitable Hotel company and is a visiting fellow of Oxford Brookes University